Not every piece of quoted speech is an independent unit. Just as the
words in a sentence are connected, there exist connections between
adjacent pieces of quoted speech so that they share similar
properties such as being spoken by the same speaker. An important feature
of ESPER's quote-identification module is the ability to detect
whether a piece of quoted speech is a new quote (NEW), where it is most
likely spoken by a different speaker from the previous speaker, or a
continuation quote (CONT) where it carries on the sentiments from the
previous speech and is spoken by the same speaker as that of the
previous. A CSML marked-up example of a new and continuation quote is
shown below:

<QUOTE TYPE="NEW"> `Come, there's no use
in crying like that!'</QUOTE> said
Alice to herself, rather sharply;
<QUOTE TYPE="CONT"> `I advise you to
leave off this minute!' </QUOTE>

Identifying the connectivity between quoted speech segments
can significantly reduce the amount of work performed when we are
identifying the speakers for each piece of quoted speech.
For instance, since we make the assumption that the quoted speech segments
that are continuations (CONT) share the same speaker as their predecessors,
then once we identify the speaker for a quoted speech segment, we can apply the
speaker information from that segment to all its continuation segments,
thereby reducing computational effort and potential error build-up.